Sugar Batteries Could Offer 20 Percent More Capacity than Lithium Ion
by
Joshua Gulick
—
Saturday, September 29, 2012, 10:15 AM EDT
Lithium-ion batteries have been powering our gadgets for more than 20 years and aren’t going away anytime soon, but serious competition may be emerging in the form of sodium and…sugar. Scientists at the Tokyo University of Science believe that sodium-sucrose-based batteries could deliver a 20% higher energy capacity than today’s lithium-ion batteries.
As it turns out, heat-blasted sugar can convert to carbon powder, which can add storage capacity to a sodium-ion battery. Lithium can be found in several locations around the world (including Argentina and China), but major deposits are few. Sodium, on the other hand, is easy to come by and inexpensive. So, conceivably, sodium-sucrose batteries may not only have longer battery life, but be less expensive, as well.
Sodium-sucrose batteries are still a long way off from hitting the market. The team that made the discovery predicts at least five years before the real sodium-sucrose batteries find consumers – and that’s if a major hurdle is overcome: as it stands now, these batteries would likely have fewer charge cycles than lithium-ion batteries.
Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.
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